Play ball!

These four Denver businessmen still have “game.” See how they’ve brought their love of baseball into their business world.

You can’t take them out of the ballgame.

There may be nine men on the diamond, but countless more are working behind the scenes — sometimes, simply for the love of the game. With the Colorado Rockies’ home opener scheduled on April 9, the Denver Business Journal spoke with several local professionals with special ties to baseball.

Greg Kalkwarf

Sales and marketing specialist

BKD LLP / Denver

Twenty years after the baseball movie “Field of Dreams” was released, fans still visit the Iowa cornfield where it was filmed.

“I have great stories,” said Kalkwarf, who helped managed the event in 1992 and 1994 as part of a regular Labor Day baseball festival.

The 1989 movie, a worldwide hit and a best-picture nominee at the 1990 Academy Awards, was filmed at the century-old Lansing family farm in Dyersville, Iowa. The baseball diamond remains there, and is open to the public — free — from April through November.

Kalkwarf, now a marketing specialist in the Denver office of Springfield, Mo.-based accounting firm BKD, plans to take his infant son there someday.

“When I was in Dyersville, I used go out to the field with my ball and glove and just stand around and throw pitches to anybody who wanted to hit,” Kalkwarf said. “I met some of the neatest people in the world, from all over the world. ... I pitched to 2-year-olds who could barely hold a bat, to 62-year-old guys who had tears streaming down their face because they remembered playing ball with their kids. I can’t wait to take my son out there.”

Marty Schechter

Owner

Schechter Public Relations / Lakewood

What happens off the field can affect a player’s career profoundly, for better or worse. Marty Schechter helps guide young players in the right direction.

“Kids, and many adults in our society, adore professional athletes. They look up to them,” said Schechter, a local public relations expert who has acted as an outside PR consultant for the Colorado Rockies for more than 10 years. “That also means that they can be deeply disappointed when those so-called heroes let us down — with emotional outbursts, a poor choice of words or a poor decision.”

For 11 seasons now, Schechter has conducted seminars on media and community relations for young players during the Rockies’ spring training in Tucson, Ariz. He also holds seminars every other year during the club’s three-week winter development program at Coors Field.

“It can be little things, as easy as carving out a few minutes after the game to think about, ‘Hey, I just had the game-winning hit; when I get back to my locker, there’s going to be a group of media people waiting to talk to me. What are my key messages here? What were the key elements of the game that I want to talk about?’” Schecter said. “It’s preparation, the same way they would prepare for an at-bat.”

The rising popularity of social media such as Facebook and Twitter creates additional challenges.

“It’s a great tool, it’s a direct link to the fans ... but it has its risks, too,” Schechter said. “There are fewer and fewer boundaries when it comes to our privacy.”

Schechter, who coaches youth baseball in Lakewood, also reminds players that good community relations don’t have to be complicated.

“A simple flip of a baseball to a young fan can create a fan for life,” he said.

James Waddell

Membership manager

Downtown Denver Partnership / Denver

Although baseball ranks far below cricket in his native Australia, James Waddell embraced it early.

“I was exposed to the game at a very young age, through my dad,” he said. “He worked for a newspaper and knew some guys who were in the military, who had friends from the U.S. He actually started a baseball club in Perth, in Western Australia, in the 1960s. So I was exposed to baseball as a young kid, and I decided that it was the best game in the world.”

Waddell was a member of the Australian national team from 1990 to 1995, and played at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. From 1996 to 2006, he worked as a scout for the New York Mets.

“Talent scouts had started going to Australia and were finding some pretty cool players,” Waddell said.

During his time as a scout, Waddel helped Australian Justin Huber sign with the Mets in 2000. Huber later played for the Kansas City Royals, San Diego Padres and Minnesota Twins; he currently plays for the Hiroshima Carp in Japan.

Waddell’s job with the Mets indirectly brought him to Denver. He met his wife in Buffalo during one of his Mets-related trips to New York, and after living in Australia for a few years, the couple moved here.

Although he’s not working in the sport anymore, he regularly hosts visiting Australian players. He also works as a hitting instructor for young players at the Denver Hitting Club.

“It’s a third-tier sport in Australia, but for the population that we have, we have an inordinate number of young Australians playing professional baseball,” Waddell said.

Gary Hoover

Vice president/wealth adviser

UMB Bank Colorado / Denver

Gary Hoover, a wealth adviser at UMB, also advises the Northwoods League, a summer baseball league that brings together the top college players in North America.

Although players aren’t paid, in order to preserve their National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) eligibility, the teams operate similarly to professional minor league teams. Players go on overnight road trips and play nightly before stadiums filled with fans.

“I’m the league general counsel and I’m also on the board,” Hoover said. “I love it because it’s like being part of a Norman Rockwell painting. Families come to these games and watch quality baseball at a reasonable price, and the boys get what is essentially a minor league internship.”

There are 24 Northwoods alumni on Major League Baseball rosters. That includes two Colorado Rockies players, Ryan Spilborghs and Clint Barmes.

Nearly 800,000 people attended Northwoods League games last summer. The Rochester, Minn.-based league includes more than a dozen teams stretching from Canada to Iowa, but doesn’t have a team in Colorado.